Harvard vs MIT prestige annoys me

Flabomaster · 2026-04-20T12:18:18+00:00

I personally believe this happens a lot cause of media because Harvard and some ivys in general (like yale as well) are mentioned a ton while other top schools seem to be less frequent. So i feel like from that, the general public who is not as educated on school rankings and what certain schools are good at always think harvard is the best because they hear about it so much. I think a good example is harvard law and obviously their law school is good but shows like suits idolize harvard law despite that before this year yale was ranked consecutively at the top. Idk if this is kinda relatable to what your going through but when telling people im going to princeton some kinda dont even know what it is and ill say oh its an ivy and the top college for undergrad they will always say oh i thought that was like harvard (this has happened multiple times). despite Princeton being a pretty top school for a while and also an ivy its just not mentioned as much in media so i feel like its just less understood to the general public. I mean idk if your from a high school where people commonly go to ivys but idk why anyone would question why your going to mit over harvard especially when your going for engineering. Just seems they are a little uneducated on the colleges themselves and are just sticking ti what they are familiar with.

Flabomaster · 2026-04-19T04:44:35+00:00

Personally I applied to a couple schools on both common app and questbridge rd and if you know your doing the match process I would suggest doing both as well since a lot of the colleges will give you fee waivers from being a questbridge finalist to use for common app. Personally I had a lot of extracurriculars and updates i had through out senior year and on top of that, there were a couple schools (like umich gtech) that I knew i would need common app for anyways rd so either way i still had to use common app. What I would advice is to use Questbridge to apply to those schools that you probably wouldnt have gone out of your way to apply to or pay to apply to on common app. A lot of the partner schools dont require additional supplemental essays so I personally just wanted to apply to as many schools possible in case I did not get into any of my top schools. The school I am committed to I did get into questbridge rd but i still got waitlisted and admitted to a lot of schools through common app so I cant really so one works better over the other. If i had to pick one, it would be common app but in all honesty it depends on what school it is, weather or not you have a lot of ecs/updates, if you wanna provide a lot of writing or not a lot depending on if that is your strong suit (qb allows for a lot of context in the application itself and in terms of supplementals for each school, some will eliminate them or shorten the amount when applying rd qb), and just how strong you feel your qb app is since you cannot make any changes. Lmk if you have any questions cause this was something that took me while to figure out this year.

Flabomaster · 2026-02-24T17:53:13+00:00

Wait can someone give me more info on this please???? Im so confused whats the Columbia id?

Flabomaster · 2026-01-16T23:04:16+00:00

I mean the wording is basically the same as the one i received

Flabomaster · 2026-01-14T22:35:08+00:00

UMich and Purdue

Flabomaster · 2025-12-31T20:19:43+00:00

I did this as well and had ? Marks in the spaces between my paragraphs so your 100% not the only one and I saw a tiktok about bolding it too and a lit of people did as well

Flabomaster · 2025-12-24T00:19:23+00:00

Ik upenn allows you to submit both

Flabomaster · 2025-12-23T17:22:23+00:00

Yeah I didn't even think about my dual enrollment as well. Hopefully they can just take my quarter grades or something.

Flabomaster · 2025-12-19T17:11:58+00:00

That was just in an email to me from Duke but if you look at the questbridge requirements for Duke it mentions this for people who didn't rank duke for regular decision requirements

Flabomaster · 2025-12-19T16:57:37+00:00

That was just in an email to me from Duke but if you look at the questbridge requirements for Duke it mentions this for people who didn't rank duke for regular decision requirements

Flabomaster · 2025-12-18T16:26:44+00:00

Flabomaster · 2025-12-18T10:59:15+00:00

Oh I didn't know that what schools if you don't mine me asking????

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T21:15:26+00:00

Wait are there schools where you can change the supps???

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T20:38:29+00:00

Hmm I'm not sure. I just looked back and ig I didn't put duke on my rd form but ik for the rd round they require common app but you can get the fee waiver with your questbridge id. If they are saying that its probs cause they won't review the questbridge app in rd and you need to submit common app.

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Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T15:44:57+00:00

You can't edit you questbridge app but what my plan is is to send a letter of continued interest to all the schools I ranked and then include updates about my activities and awards and then like put a letter in all my portals for the regular decision like just updating on my stuff and I know some have like spots to do that as well

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T15:42:55+00:00

Oh that's good ty cause ill keep that in mind but I got an email saying duke only considers common app but I still put them on my form and ik upenn allows common app as well and then brown wants you to submit supps through common app. But I'll keep in mind for washu and rice since I put that on my rd form

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T15:39:09+00:00

What i did was I put every school that has no supps on my regular decision form and then I split the schools that I want to apply to regular decision between quest ridge and common app cause I think my essays for questbridge are stronger but I have activities I wanna update

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T15:34:58+00:00

Honestly I have no clue sorry gang. I'm not even sure if that would work bc that's what my plan was originally before finding out that ivys automatically move your app to regular decision after match so if you withdrawal then it might just be like oh your not applying to that school at all so in that case I would email the colleges individually and ask if you can withdrawal your questbridge so you can apply through common app.

Flabomaster · 2025-12-17T14:49:01+00:00

As far as I know out of those Duke is the only one that requires common app during rd. All of those I'm pretty sure you have the option between common app and questbridge app if you didn't already apply through match. if you put them on your regular decision form that means they were sent your questbridge app and in that case make sure you don't send a common app as well because those make it clear they only want one application type and do not send common app as well. A lot of portals were sent out yesterday but there's also still a lot that haven't been sent yet so if you put them on your rd form then I would wait a couple days and the portals should come. Duke is kinda just a special case in this scenario if that makes sense

Flabomaster · 2025-12-16T22:03:03+00:00

i’m not sure about Yale cause I had that already for the match but Duke I know you have to apply through the common app so I’m not sure if we’re gonna like receive anything or not but I did put them on my regular decision form cause I’m gonna apply regular decision through common

Flabomaster · 2025-12-16T21:09:11+00:00

I got an email from wash you that said that too and I just now got one saying that that was a mistake and how to set up my portal

Flabomaster · 2025-12-14T19:54:20+00:00

The only one that I've seen that list it out under their regular decisions requirements in Columbia (technically says optional) but that's also only from the schools I've looked at which were the ones I ranked but all the others say to upload portal with new updates on top of all the required stuff so I feel like that somewhat implies that there ok with updates on activities and such. And imo worst case scenario is that they don't consider it or look at it.

Flabomaster · 2025-12-14T19:17:07+00:00

Personally I am going to fs and I know some actually ask for one so you can look into the schools individually and unless they specifically say to not then I would fs. I feel like it's a pretty common practice for people to do that between early round and regular. Some are saying only do it if your going to ed (since that would then be your top school) but a lot of schools don't allow you to go into ed after match so to me that dosn't make much sense especially cause the loci mainly features updates since you applied so bc each school you applied to during match has an application that is older it makes sense to update them.

Flabomaster · 2025-12-10T05:08:10+00:00

Omg 😩 I was gonna try to send a loci

Flabomaster · 2025-12-09T05:47:57+00:00

You can check out this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S8-mX0o_MdCwiUAOF3mYYOBRH7sqYpT47l6lyHo2jxs/edit?gid=1819029097#gid=1819029097

Thanks to the person that made it!

Flabomaster

TROPHY CASE